JFK and Mary Meyer

by Jesse Kornbluth

  81 On Sunday, November 24—two days after the assassination—the show got a rave review from Leslie Judd Ahlander in the Washington Post: “Using the tondo, or circular, canvas, Mary Meyer divides the area into curved and sinuous areas that sometimes seem to set the tondo to revolving as the colors succeed each other’s pull outward. Color, obtained through the use of plastic paint on unsized canvas, as is usual with this group of artists, is luminous and carefully thought out. Her work has always shown a quality that made one want to see more. Now she is working hard and the results are gratifying indeed.”

  82 If Leary’s memory is correct, Mary called him the day after the assassination. She was, he wrote, drunk or drugged, nearly incoherent: “They couldn’t control him anymore. He was changing too fast. He was learning too much…They’ll cover everything up. I’ve got to come see you. I’m scared. I’m afraid.”

  83 In 1964, La Verne Duffy, one of Robert Kennedy’s longtime Senate investigators, says Kennedy told him: “It’s impossible that Oswald and Ruby hadn’t known one another.” Later, he said that Kennedy told him: “Those Cuban c***s are all working for the mob. They’re trying to make this look like a Castro Communist hit. I don’t buy it. And I don’t trust those guys at the CIA. They’re worse than the Mafia.” For the sake of national sanity, Robert Kennedy would publicly endorse the Warren Commission’s report, but he never believed that Oswald was the only shooter. It became his plan to be elected president and reopen the investigation.

  84 Allen Dulles (1893–1969) became the first civilian director of Central Intelligence in 1952. He held the post longer than any director in the CIA’s history. On November 28, 1961, a day before Dulles resigned, Kennedy presented him with the National Security Medal at CIA Headquarters: “I know of no other American in the history of this country who has served in seven administrations of seven presidents, and at the end of each administration each president of the United States has paid tribute to his service…and also has counted Allen Dulles as their friend.”

  85 It was true. On November 22, Aristotle Onassis was in Germany. He called Lee Radziwill in London; she asked him to Washington for the funeral. On November 23, the White House officially invited him. He was one of only six guests who weren’t family members who were invited to stay at the White House. In Greek Fire: The Story of Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis, Nicholas Gage writes: “Inside the White House, on Sunday, November 24, Onassis discovered the raucous atmosphere of an Irish wake. He found himself joking with Bobby Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, Robert McNamara, Ken O’Donnell, and Dave Powers, as well as other family members and close friends. After teasing Onassis about his fortune, Bobby Kennedy produced a bogus contract pledging half of it to the poor of Latin America. Keeping a straight face, Onassis signed it in Greek. He also found time during the weekend to spend a few minutes with Jackie in the family quarters and to offer her some words of consolation.”

  86 According to Seymour Hersh’s The Dark Side of Camelot, the pool party where Kennedy “severely tore a groin muscle” took place on the West Coast in the last week of September: “The pain was so intense that the White House medical staff prescribed a stiff canvas shoulder-to-groin brace that locked his body in a rigid upright position. It was far more constraining than his usual back brace, which he also continued to wear. The two braces were meant to keep him as comfortable as possible during the strenuous days of campaigning, including that day in Dallas.”

  In Dallas, November 22, 1963, Robert Caro’s short book about the assassination, he describes the apparatus Kennedy wore under his shirt that day: “When he had gotten dressed that morning, Kennedy had strapped a canvas brace with metal stays tightly around him and then wrapped over it and around his thighs in a figure-eight pattern an elastic bandage for extra support for his bad back; it was going to be a long day.”

  In John F. Kennedy’s Back: Chronic Pain, Failed Surgeries, and the Story of Its Effects on His Life and Death (July 11, 2017, The Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine), T. Glenn Pait, MD, and Justin T. Dowdy, MD, reviewed the reports of doctors who treated Kennedy’s back. “The brace was a firmly bound corset, around his hips and lower back and higher up,” Pait noted. “He tightly laced it and put a wide Ace bandage around in a figure eight around his trunk. If you think about it, if you have that brace all the way up your chest, above your nipples, and real tight, are you going to be able to bend forward?” In their article, Pait and Dowdy wrote: “When the first bullet struck him in the back of the neck, his back brace held him erect, allowing the next and fatal bullet to strike the back of his head. JFK’s aching back was with him until the bitter end.”

  87 Invoking Camelot was almost inevitable, considering the success of the Broadway musical. It had blue-ribbon creators: Alan Jay Lerner wrote the book and lyrics, Frederick Loewe wrote the music, Moss Hart was the director. It opened on Broadway on December 3, 1960, and closed on January 5, 1963—the run spanned most of Kennedy’s presidency. The songs were everywhere; the original cast album was the number one LP for sixty weeks. Arthur Schlesinger had a tart take on Jackie’s invention: “myth turned into a cliché.” Clare Boothe Luce’s assessment of Kennedy’s presidency was more cynical: “came-a-lot.”

  88 In JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, James W. Douglass describes the government’s reaction to Truman’s explosive but little-seen warning. On April 17, 1964, Allen Dulles flew to Independence, Missouri, and met with Truman at the Truman Library. His request: Would Truman retract the article? A few days later, Dulles wrote a secret memo to the CIA General Counsel. He reported that Truman “seemed quite astounded by it [the article]. In fact, he said that this was all wrong. He then said he felt it had made a very unfortunate impression…At no time did Mr. Truman express other than complete agreement with the viewpoint I expressed and several times said he would see what he could do about it. He obviously was highly disturbed by the Washington Post article.”

  Douglass comments: “Dulles was lying for the record. The plainspoken president meant what he said and would repeat it. Truman’s published words were faithful to the preliminary words he had written by hand on December 1, three weeks before the article appeared…Ignoring the pressures of Allen Dulles, President Truman restated his radical critique of the CIA in a letter to the managing editor of Look magazine written six months after the Washington Post article: “Thank you for the copy of Look with the article about the Central Intelligence Agency. It is, I regret to say, not true to the facts in many respects. The CIA was set up by me for the sole purpose of getting all the available information to the president. It was not intended to operate as an international agency engaged in strange activities.”

  89 About the fingerprint on the gun: Sebastian F. Latona, supervisor of the FBI’s Latent Fingerprint Section, and Arthur Mandella, fingerprint expert of the New York City Police Department, identified a palm print on the rifle that was made by Oswald’s right hand.

  About the absence of paraffin on Oswald’s cheek: FBI experiments conducted before the assassination showed the unreliability of paraffin tests. From FBI expert Cortlandt Cunningham’s testimony to the Warren Commission (3H487): “Seventeen men were involved in this test. Each man fired five shots from a .38 caliber revolver. Both the firing hand and the hand that was not involved in the firing were treated with paraffin casts, and then those casts treated with diphenylamine. A total of eight men showed negative or essentially negative results on both hands. A total of three men showed positive results on the idle hand, but negative on the firing hand. Two men showed positive results on their firing hand and negative results on their idle hands. And four men showed positive on both hands, after having fired only with their right hands.”

  90 The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald fired three shots in 8.3 seconds. On March 22, 1979, G. Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel and director of the Select Committee on Assassinations (established in 1976 to investigate the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.), reported on a test
by four expert marksmen of the same rifle Oswald owned. The findings: “1) It is apparently difficult, but not impossible—at least with only minimal practice with the firearm used—to fire three shots, at least two of which score ‘kills,’ with an elapsed time of 1.7 seconds or less between any two shots, even though in the limited testing conducted, no shooter achieved this degree of proficiency. (2) It is not difficult to fire two consecutive shots from a Mannlicher-Carcano within 1.66 seconds, and to ‘point aim,’ if not carefully ‘sight’ it, on the target of each shot. (3) There was ample time for Oswald to have fired 3 shots, hitting with two of them, within 8.31 seconds.”

  91 Mary personalized the last lines of “Fern Hill,” by Dylan Thomas: “Time held me green and dying/ Though I sang in my chains like the sea.”

  1964

  JANUARY 1

  RESOLUTIONS

  The boys: be more engaged.

  My work: I’m going to be in two shows this year if I have to steal one of Ken Noland’s pictures to do it.

  Love: Don’t think about it.

  JANUARY 4

  Senator Eugene McCarthy, writing in the Saturday Evening Post, of all places: “The CIA Is Getting Out of Hand.”

  JANUARY 20

  I don’t always lock the doors to the garden, but I know I don’t leave them open at night in the winter. Unsettling. Scary. I filed a police report.

  JANUARY 25

  Thick, fluffy snow—like in New York, on days when school was canceled and Tony and I would walk for hours on Park Avenue, smoking cigarettes we didn’t dare inhale and hoping to run into boys we knew.

  Noon. Walk.

  It’s like stepping into a black-and-white French movie.

  On the towpath, no one’s out, the only sound is the crunch of my boots.

  Coming toward me, a woman in a cashmere coat and a scarf.

  Jackie.

  “Oh, Mary.”

  We fall into each other’s arms, weeping.

  “We were so happy.”

  The past—what she knows, what she feels—who cares about any of that now?

  We are two women, mourning one man.92

  She whispers: “La mer s’est élevée avec les pleurs.”93

  Holding each other.

  She’s shaking.

  I’m not.

  But I can’t get a word out.

  She walks on.

  I’m a statue.

  I turn and watch her disappear.

  I don’t think I’ll ever see her again.

  FEBRUARY 2

  Jack died before his recklessness caught up to him.

  He got away with the affairs with Marilyn and others.

  But with the election ahead Hoover would make sure newspaper editors here would know about Jack’s part in the British sex scandal. Bobby and Pierre would try to convince editors to sit on it—and maybe they’d succeed. But after the first story, the British press would name other women. Or they’d come forward on their own: “I slept with Jack Kennedy.” And the avalanche would cascade.

  I’d be dragged into this. Cord would make sure of that. No way could Ben keep me out. “Mary Meyer, artist” would disappear. I’d be “presidential mistress” forever.

  FEBRUARY 5

  Bobby goes around in Jack’s bomber jacket.

  He’s lost so much weight he’s skeletal.

  Some days he carries a copy of The Greek Way that Jackie gave him—and Jack’s overcoat.

  If someone could paint that…a picture for the ages.

  FEBRUARY 6

  Castro cut the water supply to Guantanamo—over nothing: US seizure of Cuban fishing boats.

  Johnson arranged delivery of water to the base.

  The lesson of the Bay of Pigs: learned.

  FEBRUARY 7

  Cord, on the phone, as belligerent at noon as he used to be, drunk, at night.

  - You’re making a fool of yourself with this Nancy Drew act.

  - I have questions.

  - Ignorant questions.

  - Like?

  - Just for starters: about the Agency and the Bay of Pigs.

  - What about it?

  - You felt Jack sold you out.

  - He did.

  - After you sold him a fairy tale.

  - We sold Jack nothing! Bobby and Jack were active planners.94

  - He said not.

  - He had a chance to get rid of Castro, and he ended up giving Castro a job for life. And then he acted like the whole thing never happened.

  I didn’t have a quick response.

  - But, of course, you and Jack were too…busy to talk about that.

  FEBRUARY 9

  “Mom, hurry. The Beatles will be on in a minute.”

  So I turned on Ed Sullivan.

  The girls screaming, the band knowing how to make them scream, the pulsing energy of the young. And the simple emotions: “She Loves You.”

  I’ve been feeling like I’m dragging a load of grief too heavy even to haul across the room—but tonight my age melted away…

  FEBRUARY 11

  The Beatles’ first American concert is in DC—at four dollars, how could I not get tickets? I bought one for myself in a different row, and two for each boy. They took dates. Loved hearing the awkward conversations in the backseat. And being called “Mrs. Meyer.”

  FEBRUARY 14

  No Valentines. No date. I’ve driven everyone away. A blessing. I couldn’t sit across a table from anyone.

  FEBRUARY 15

  Marguerite Oswald declared that her son was a secret agent for the CIA who was “set up to take the blame” for the Kennedy assassination. If so, Allen Dulles is a suspect. But he’s basically in control of the inquiry.95

  MARCH 14

  Jack Ruby convicted of murder. The jury needed only two hours and nineteen minutes. Sentence: death. The verdict was televised live. Perfect symmetry!

  MARCH 20

  I used to smoke marijuana so I could feel deeper, know more. Now I drink to feel less.

  MAY 10

  Ken taught me: Never believe your show is happening until you see the pictures on the walls.

  They are. At the Pan American Union. Nine Contemporary American Painters. Starts in Buenos Aires, moves on Rio de Janeiro. I’m showing with hotshot men: Gene Davis, Tom Downing, and Sam Gilliam.

  Lawrence Alloway, the curator: “In Washington a constant of several painters has been the use of flat color on unprimed canvas…the repetition of a single image is typical of this kind of painting, in which color, its tensions and its variable, is central. The paint of spectrally related colors in Meyer’s curved circular canvas defines forms that roll in from the outer edge of the canvas…Meyer’s home is in a central area or point.”

  A phrase came to me, reading this: harmonious creativity. I think it means that the balance of an image is an expression of an inner tranquility. Have to laugh—I am so far from that!

  MAY 15

  Drinks with [Editor’s Note: The name is crossed out. From the information conveyed, the source seems to be an editor or writer for Life magazine.] Did he mind if I took notes? Not at all. If I taped the conversation? He asked why I would want to do that. Because I wanted him to promise that for purposes of publication nothing I said would be used. And especially not my name. He said okay. So…he began…

  - The Life issue of November 22, with Elizabeth Ashley on the cover, had a piece with this headline: SCANDAL GROWS AND GROWS IN WASHINGTON.

  - Right. About Bobby Baker.

  - You read it?

  - Yes.

  - Not because you were interested in a “political adviser” to Lyndon Johnson, but because, as you know, Bobby Baker was a lot more than secretary to the majority leader when Johnson ran the Senate—he was the guy at the Quorum Club who set politicians up with hookers. And he hooked himself up to a vending machine company that had a lot of machines in aerospace companies with government contracts, and a great deal of money came his way, and Johnson also profited. And there was another reason to
be interested in Bobby Baker: Ellen Rometsch.96

  - Do you think she was a spy for East Germany?

  - I don’t know.

  - But Kennedy thought she might be.

  - I don’t know what he thought.

  - He never talked about her?

  - To me? Why would he?

  - Mary…I know about you and Jack.

  I pointed to the tape recorder.

  - No. You know nothing.

  - I know…

  - Say it!

  - I didn’t come here to talk about that.

  - Say it!

  - I know nothing about you and Jack.

  - So…why are you here?

  Life was doing a follow-up to the Bobby Baker piece. A guy named Don Reynolds, an insurance broker who had been one of Baker’s partners, was about to come clean about Baker’s kickback operation…including, we were told, money going to Lyndon Johnson’s campaign. He had invoices and canceled checks. And at 10 o’clock on the morning of November 22, he walked into a Senate meeting room to share the documents and checks with Senate investigators. Life knew this.

  And as Reynolds was spilling his guts in Washington, there was a meeting at the magazine to decide if we should run with this stuff or wait and do a bigger piece—thousands of words, published over several weeks—called “Lyndon Johnson’s Money.” Did you read that piece?

  - No.

  - Nobody did. Twenty minutes into that meeting, Kennedy got shot, and everybody scrambled, and later no one had any appetite for exposing the new president.

  - Why are you telling me about this?

  As senate majority leader, Johnson was one of the most powerful men in the government—maybe the most powerful. He’s connected to Texas oilmen, and he does their bidding, and let’s assume that’s in some way profitable for him. But on November 22, it looks like he could lose everything. And then…suddenly…his problems disappear. So you have to wonder: Kennedy is killed in Johnson’s home state. Is it possible some very rich Texans were in on the assassination? I’m not saying that Johnson was tired of living in Kennedy’s shadow, although he was, or that he suspected he was going to be dumped from the ticket in ’64, which he was, and that he had good reasons to be involved in the hit…but if it’s possible that rich Texans were behind it, is it at least possible that Johnson knew it was going to happen?